Beleaguered
by lorca90
Summary: This story follows the lives of the eight gym leaders of the Terraka region and a looming political crisis.


p style="margin-bottom: .11in; line-height: 200%;"span style="font-size: 18pt;"1./span/p  
p style="margin-bottom: .11in; line-height: 200%;"span style="font-size: 12pt;"After five years of jet-setting and being told how to keep his facial hair, of vocal exercises and tabloids, of the drone of drones and producers, of fans sending letters and PokéBalls and underwear, of beds less comfortable than where he slept in the mines all those years, Gideon hated the set-ups the most. He sat in a tiny chair at a tiny table across from a large man with teeth like mirrors, who was staring into his spoon. And he should have been grateful that it wasn't any large man. Wasn't like that buffoon of a baseball player whom he supposedly based his last album on, insipid man with lips like warm putty. This was a man of integrity. A man of granite. /spanspan style="font-size: 12pt;"The/spanspan style="font-size: 12pt;" gay Elite Four member, Adam. Regina had pulled string after string until it seemed like she was chimera-ing a harp to get this meeting to happen. She swore this relationship, plus the success of Gideon's Gym, would catapult his next album into triple platinum ("Can't we just focus on good lyrics?" "Gid, can't we just focus on you being pretty and pouty?"). Gideon drained two cups of coffee before Adam even showed up: a combination of nerves and Adam being half an hour late./span/p  
p style="margin-bottom: .11in; line-height: 200%;"span style="font-size: 12pt;" The two sat invisibly amongst the other so-and-sos of the café, which always made Gideon uncomfortable. He thought of his parents, with their cheeks permanently etched with coal and their always-thinning clothes, attempting to set foot within a mile of the place: the concrete practically infused with gold, all the blocks around the café swarming politician-types and the kind of people who sell stocks and throw benefits for the poor living literally two blocks away instead of having the presence of mind to schlep the food over to them. Gideon pawed at his button-up as Adam narrated his likes and dislikes and personal history./span/p  
p style="margin-bottom: .11in; line-height: 200%;"span style="font-size: 12pt;"Adam drinks his coffee black. Adam likes the color red./span/p  
p style="text-indent: .5in; margin-bottom: .11in; line-height: 200%;"br /br /p  
p style="text-indent: .5in; margin-bottom: .11in; line-height: 200%;"span style="font-size: 12pt;"Outside the window, a girl with a Meowth and disheveled hair turned gymnastics tricks in an attempted exchange for loose coins. When a woman in a champagne-colored dress suit slunk past the girl without eye contact, the Pokémon began to produce tokens from the air. It displayed them to the roving necklaces and wristwatches, all of whom, again, paid them no mind. Gideon sipped at his third cup of coffee, alternating with his glass of water. He fidgeted with his tie and discreetly tried to check the clock, which of course was as far away from their table as possible./span/p  
p style="text-indent: .5in; margin-bottom: .11in; line-height: 200%;"span style="font-size: 12pt;"Adam has four older brothers, all of whom are expats, and an older sister, who got sick before the vaccine made it through its first trial— one of the first "passive" deaths of the War. Adam decided to train Fighting types after a bully called him faggot for walking too swishily in seventh grade./span/p  
p style="margin-bottom: .11in; line-height: 200%;"span style="font-size: 12pt;"When the woman in the champagne dress suit entered the café, she whispered something into the host's ear. His mustache waggled a bit, he slumped his shoulders, and disappeared behind a velvet curtain for a moment. He returned, flanked by two men twice his height, who dismissed themselves to the café's exterior and descended upon the girl in a shower of navy. She did not resist as her Meowth disappeared into a shadow growing in the afternoon and the two men carried her in the opposite direction. Several people with briefcases tiredly sidestepped them as if this were a regular occurrence, no rarer than a person walking more slowly than they on the sidewalk, or a few drops of rain necessitating that they produce an umbrella from their unnecessarily ornate overcoats./span/p  
p style="text-indent: .5in; margin-bottom: .11in; line-height: 200%;"span style="font-size: 12pt;"Adam is left handed, but signs autographs with his right— something about plausible deniability./span/p  
p style="text-indent: .5in; margin-bottom: .11in; line-height: 200%;"span style="font-size: 12pt;"The men in blue returned eventually. One seemed to have grown a few new wrinkles around his eyes; the other walked with a little less poise than he seemed to possess when he first exited the shop. The woman in champagne sipped from a steaming cup and nodded her thanks to them. They disappeared behind the curtain, which now seemed to be breathe. Gideon slid his coffee cup to the side of the table. He admired the glaze over Adam's eyes, like emerald pottery, intense and fragile at the same time. The man kept his eyes trained at one spot: his jawline, always parallel to the table, his shoulders plumb against the booth. He sipped from his cup intermittently and took a breath less often, but spoke with the deliberateness of someone who knew he had permission to take up space. Adam spread his arms across the top of the booth as if two men nuzzled into either of his impressively sculpted and apparent pecs. He snaked his boot against Gideon's ankle; he recoiled at first, then settled into the heat of it. Platinum, he told himself. Platinum./span/p  
p style="text-indent: .5in; margin-bottom: .11in; line-height: 200%;"span style="font-size: 12pt;"Adam is in talks to do a movie after this League season, but he doesn't know if it's on-brand enough ("It's supposed to be an action movie, but they're trying to pair me opposite this limp-wristed guy as my love interest. I know it's pretty progressive to have a gay romance the way the pundits are talking about us right now, but I can't get myself associated with some fairy. Oh, Peaches? Nah, but he /spanspan style="font-size: 12pt;"trains/spanspan style="font-size: 12pt;" fairies. That's different. Oh, he does drag, too?")./span/p  
p style="text-indent: .5in; margin-bottom: .11in; line-height: 200%;"span style="font-size: 12pt;"The woman in champagne left without fanfare, or, from what Gideon could detect, a tip. She affixed a furry hat to the top of her head and hailed an especially large Luxray from her purse, which knelt to its stomach for her to climb atop. It carried her across the street, where she stepped into a skyscraper that was known for its charitable organizations. Gideon rolled his eyes, and excused himself for a moment to deposit a couple of dollars onto the woman's table./span/p  
p style="text-indent: .5in; margin-bottom: .11in; line-height: 200%;"span style="font-size: 12pt;"Adam doesn't like to read, but is classically trained in piano. Adam has an impeccably large penis, but he's classy and doesn't share proof until at least the third date./span/p  
p style="margin-bottom: .11in; line-height: 200%;"span style="font-size: 12pt;"To Gideon's right, Dia looked like she wasn't enjoying herself either. The Mawile mechanically nibbled at her biscuits as Matador, Adam's Gallade, prattled on with few hand gestures and fewer inflections of emotion in his voice. They had been in the café for an hour (Gideon, an hour and a half), and so far the only question Adam had asked Gideon was whether he had been here before. Outside the shop window, in place of the girl and her Meowth, giant cameras and their paparazzi had congregated to gawk at the two men: the window, a gaping mouth or a very large eye./span/p  
p style="margin-bottom: .11in; line-height: 200%;"span style="font-size: 16px; line-height: 24px;" Opulence/spanspan style="font-size: 12pt;" draped from the walls of the café. Faux ivory carvings of Arcanine, Milotic, and Ninetales held watch in the corners and aisles. Posh pastries hovered above the hands of servers, weaving in coordinated spectrum of tangerine and plum. Spirits of espresso wafted into noses and condensed in tiny clouds above each table. Servers, none of whom glowed of affluence of their patrons, doted: some, in spite of clear effort otherwise, wore scuffed shoes or threadbare pants./span/p  
p style="margin-bottom: .11in; line-height: 200%;"span style="font-size: 12pt;""You're cute," Adam said. "So why the girl hair?"/span/p  
p style="margin-bottom: .11in; line-height: 200%;"span style="font-size: 12pt;"Gideon brushed a copper-colored strand behind his pink ear. He had tied most of it into a bun at the back of his head, but parts of it were still too short for the elastic band. "It was kind of shaggy when I got signed —couldn't really afford a cut at the time— and, uh, my manager thought it might evoke the mountain miner look a little more if I grew it out. You know, authenticity."/span/p  
p style="margin-bottom: .11in; line-height: 200%;"span style="font-size: 12pt;""Come on, even I know no miner is going to have long hair like that. It would get snagged in the caves," Adam said through a mouthful of biscotti. "I know your dad had short-cut hair when he went down there. Did your mom have long hair?"/span/p  
p style="margin-bottom: .11in; line-height: 200%;"span style="font-size: 12pt;""Down to her waist, but she tied it up and covered it with this tight cap when she went to work."/span/p  
p style="margin-bottom: .11in; line-height: 200%;"span style="font-size: 12pt;""See? That's what I hate about the music industry. It's all bullshit gorged on autotune. Some mountain man you are."/span/p  
p style="margin-bottom: .11in; line-height: 200%;"span style="font-size: 12pt;"This was meant to be a flirty gesture, Gideon assumed, so he smiled weakly instead of rolling his eyes. They sat like that for another half-hour until the servers changed shifts and the new one, a teenage girl with big hair and bigger eyes spilled a pitcher of water over Adam's side of the table in her surprise at the gleam of his teeth and the gold of his hair and the way the button-up stretched across his biceps like a seafoam-colored membrane. He jumped with a yelp. After she hurried to sop the water, Adam derided her for wearing low-quality slacks to work, and then suggested that she fix her shoddy manicure. She rushed away through a gauntlet of plush booths and chairs gilded with gold leaf into the kitchen. Instinctively, Gideon dropped to hands and knees to mop the water from the marble floor: he knew a shiny new server would be along to do the same shortly, by why not lessen their load? Adam maintained his upright posture, but placed his hand in the small of Gideon's back./span/p  
p style="margin-bottom: .11in; line-height: 200%;"span style="font-size: 12pt;""That position looks great on you."/span/p  
p style="margin-bottom: .11in; line-height: 200%;"span style="font-size: 12pt;"When it was time to leave, Adam's Lucario, Jet, transported them into a narrow alley away from the paparazzi with a deft Extremespeed. They slipped past a couple of tall bank buildings, a tower that housed several magazines, and a three-story Pokémon Salon, to the ID entry/exit point. Entry into and exit from The Oasis, so it was called by the lawyers and pharmaceutical researches that worked there, required a photo ID (most often a passport, but after a certain level of notoriety, a smirk or head nod sufficed). This ID gave the holders access to a three-block by three-block grid of the highest-grossing businesses in the region, architects and doctors, Silph Co. and the Pokémon Center Headquarters. Three-tier fountains and bushes cut into amorphous spectacles covered the place like a fungus./span/p  
p style="text-indent: .5in; margin-bottom: .11in; line-height: 200%;"span style="font-size: 12pt;"Past the exit, the flash disappeared. The sidewalk deteriorated with every step Gideon and Adam took. Graffiti crawled across crumbling walls. Bands of two and three adultless children scrambled by them almost every block. Adam thumbed his pocket for his wallet each time. The two walked anonymously in sunglasses past bodegas and dollar stores, close enough to each other to feel the gravity of the other's hand, but not touching. They discussed starter Pokémon and what led either of them to get involved in League politics. Every few blocks, the property value ticked slightly here and there: apartment buildings shrank into two-bedroom houses and the bodegas bloomed into corner pharmacies, but nothing reached the opulence of the block where the café sat. A couple of kids in hand-me-down t-shirts challenged the men to a battle. Gideon declined, fearing they might recognize him. At one point, he stopped in the middle of a street that was more pothole than asphalt, shoved his hands in his pockets, and stared into a waxy window. A grandma in a robe chased two children into the kitchen where they sat and spooned at what looked like a plate of beans. He sat down on the curb and forced back a couple of tears./span/p  
p style="text-indent: .5in; margin-bottom: .11in; line-height: 200%;""span style="font-size: 12pt;"You okay, bro?" Adam said, kicking at the sole of Gideon's shoe./span/p  
p style="text-indent: .5in; margin-bottom: .11in; line-height: 200%;""span style="font-size: 12pt;"Yeah. This just kind of reminds me of home." Gideon wadded up a flyer he had sat next to —some up-and-coming politician who promised better jobs by cutting unions or taxes or something— and tossed it into the shadows./span/p  
p style="text-indent: .5in; margin-bottom: .11in; line-height: 200%;""span style="font-size: 12pt;"I thought you grew up in the sticks?"/span/p  
p style="text-indent: .5in; margin-bottom: .11in; line-height: 200%;""span style="font-size: 12pt;"Well, yes, I did. But I think this is what Silverthorne would have looked like if there'd been more than 500 people living in it. Nearest grocery store miles away. Folks working 12-hour days in the mines for pennies. It's sad and we're just walking around like it's nothing."/span/p  
p style="text-indent: .5in; margin-bottom: .11in; line-height: 200%;"span style="font-size: 12pt;"The two sat on the curb until their shadows were long, and then until their shadows were obscured by the shadows of the buildings above them and the howls of playing children stopped reverberating against their ribs in exchange for the curt admonition of parents and grandparents for the children to come in from the dark. Adam slipped his index finger into one of Gideon's belt loops. Gideon leaned toward him, almost to touch, into the warmth that he sloughed even in the heat of the evening. This was the first moment Gideon realized he was sweating. It perched atop the hair on his arms like dew; it gathered in the trench at his lower back; it sang along his ankles. He let the night cool it and coax the heat off of his body. Since they left the café, Gideon hoped they would encounter the girl with the Meowth and that he would tell her that she could someday afford to step into the shop wearing whatever she wanted and order whatever she wanted. Instead, they encountered posters, trash cans, a Pidove or two. The swill of poor plumbing and of the mixture of sweat and dust from the crumbling roads. Another woman with hair and a limp like his mother's. The sun disappeared completely. The howling of street hordes and the audible ticking of watches began./span/p  
p style="text-indent: .5in; margin-bottom: .11in; line-height: 200%;""span style="font-size: 12pt;"So, if this works out," Gideon said, standing and brushing off his backside, "Would you want to play piano for a track on my next album?"/span/p  
p style="text-indent: .5in; margin-bottom: .11in; line-height: 200%;""span style="font-size: 12pt;"If the song is good," Adam said, then flinched at a Purrloin overturning a trashcan. "Where was your pick-up point again?"/span/p  
p style="text-indent: .5in; margin-bottom: .11in; line-height: 200%;"span style="font-size: 12pt;"Gideon re-oriented himself with the street names and the flow of their causeways, the only anxiety he felt surging from the nearness of his fingers to Adam's. Adam, on the other hand, began to walk in the wrong direction, a knuckle to his belt, apparently ready to summon a Pokémon at a moment's notice./span/p  
p style="margin-bottom: .11in; line-height: 200%;"span style="font-size: 12pt;""I'm supposed to meet my manager outside of Philo's gym. I don't think it's far from here?"/span/p  
p style="margin-bottom: .11in; line-height: 200%;"span style="font-size: 12pt;"Most of the streetlamps had burnt out, so the two navigated using the yellow light that peeked from curtains along the brick facades. The last time he'd been in Goldgilt City was for his Gym Leader qualifier against Philo three years before. He and Judah visited The Oasis, but forsook it quickly for the art district where murals bloomed from the upheaved concrete and the wails of buskers bounced off the bus stops into open windows. They met Peaches there. The three of them perched atop the steps of a library and sang for what felt like hours, Gideon with his guitar, a couple of buckets Peaches had snatched up for drums, and Judah on bass, which no one could hear until his Greninja, Lilith, finessed an amp from one of the music students walking home from school. That was right before Gideon's second album went gold, when he was still niche and had coal under his fingernails. The win against Philo fetched him a couple of endorsement deals and soon his face —the sunken blue eyes, the too-big nose, the dimpled chin— bled across computer screens and marquees in every city in Terraka, including the section of Goldgilt he'd been so eager to leave. Gideon had suggested to Judah that he apply for the open Gym Leader spot in Marrius Town, but Judah evaporated shortly after with a kiss and no hint as to his future whereabouts./span/p  
p style="margin-bottom: .11in; line-height: 200%;"span style="font-size: 12pt;"As they came upon Philo's gym, Gideon lacked no awareness of Adam's whereabouts. The man, whose alarmingly beautiful collar bones hit at Gideon's eye level, pulled him off of the ground, pressed him against the mortar of the building and his lips against Gideon's. His breath smelled like cinnamon. His chin dug into Gideon's. The muscles of his abdomen flexed against Gideon's crotch. He crashed to the ground, lips stinging with the astringent of Adam's stubble./span/p  
p style="margin-bottom: .11in; line-height: 200%;"span style="font-size: 12pt;""Well, that was," Gideon stammered, "unwarranted."/span/p  
p style="margin-bottom: .11in; line-height: 200%;"span style="font-size: 12pt;""Your folksy story resonated with me," Adam said. "I'll be in touch with your manager."/span/p  
p style="text-indent: .5in; margin-bottom: .11in; line-height: 200%;"span style="font-size: 12pt;"Then he disappeared with a blur./span/p  
p style="text-indent: .5in; margin-bottom: .11in; line-height: 200%;"br /br /p  
p style="text-indent: .5in; margin-bottom: .11in; line-height: 200%;"span style="font-size: 12pt;"Philo rocked his hips with the bassline, descending and ascending back on to what's-his-name. The man towered behind him and rapped his palms against Philo's waist to the beat of the strobe lights. To the unassuming art junkie, they might have appeared to be a performance piece. Simulated sex. Commentary on the repressive governmental mandates regarding sodomy in all its forms. The art gallery was full of bodies milling about cleanly, peering at paintings of other bodies sweating through leather bands and leashes and harnesses; their chests glistened and the condensation from the smoke machine clung to their thighs and the hair on their jaws./span/p  
p style="text-indent: .5in; margin-bottom: .11in; line-height: 200%;"span style="font-size: 12pt;"To simulate the same club-like environment, Philo had dimmed the lights, dragged out his own (low-grade) smoke machine, and rigged up a set of strobe lights. Andi was managing the bar, and Boston had taken her spot at the entrance of the gallery filtering out guests and checking in Pokémon. Philo hadn't gotten off in what felt like weeks. He ground against what's-his-name in the corner with the most mirrors. No one noticed or paid mind— probably the latter. Philo braced himself against the mirror, his palm against his palm, his eyebrows contracting into each other on both sides of the glass. The tawny orbs of his cheeks blushed a stippled red; his hair, long enough to be tied in a stubby ponytail, quivered in a dark bunch with each thrust, his small frame made even more streamlined by the harness over his chest and the excessive mass of the man behind him./span/p  
p style="text-indent: .5in; margin-bottom: .11in; line-height: 200%;"span style="font-size: 12pt;"The whole room contracted around the men. Suddenly, an amalgam of limbs. Suddenly, a chord was caress. Painting tearing canvas into patrons' flesh. The drip of wax and sculpture trapping a woman with her camera phone too close to a clamped granite nipple. Philo's vision tightened as the man dug deeper into him. There was not enough room for all the bodies: they bulged and tripped over each other; they colluded and coiled and cringed until the oil in the pores, too, condensed in small rainbow slicks across each face: each attendee their own pallet and canvas. The floor melted and sloped in the middle, then toward the front, then toward the back. Philo struggled to keep his footing, dug his fingernails into the other man's thighs. The mirrors multiplied and kaleidoscoped. The smoke thickened into tangibility. The man moaned behind him in harmony with the remix cascading from the DJ booth, the basin of his pelvis luring Philo deeper into his skin, the down on his crotch and on Philo's thighs weaving on invisible loom. The man's motion, more staccato, breaching less distance and releasing more force. Philo made eye contact with the reflection of a squat and ugly man in a leather cap at the front of club who looked all too disinterested in his conversation with a woman in a full rubber bodysuit, or were they the actual performance art? At the bar, Andi beckoned for Boston to help her with a flock of white men in madras and visors, who brandished from their pastel shorts plastic cards. A set of eyes peeked through the bars of the window near the door. The skin on Philo's arms prickled against the cold mirror, as the man bucked Philo off his center of gravity and he crashed into his own face. A sprout of blood vined from his nose and smeared across the glass; Philo grinned. The man grinned until the look dissolved into a closing of eyes, a slackening of the nape of his neck, a swelling of the triceps. He was close. Philo was not. The Gym Leader closed his eyes to allow himself to feel every twitch and plumb, the grip around his cock and the ripple of ecstasy in his ass./span/p  
p style="text-indent: .5in; margin-bottom: .11in; line-height: 200%;"span style="font-size: 12pt;"As he came closer to climax, Philo realized how inefficiently they moved. He couldn't construct a comparison. The patrons contorted their heads to see the hangings on the ceiling and caught against the rhythm like –the keys of a piano? The joints of an old cat? Tectonic plates? All the while Philo and his man halted and restarted like a knicked CD. Or a fissure in the pavement./span/p  
p style="text-indent: .5in; margin-bottom: .11in; line-height: 200%;"span style="font-size: 12pt;"The friction in the other man's bucking grew until the world narrowed and Philo was split in two and the smoke machine was alight with the fire it concealed and the dancers were sparkplugs and the air glittered with their heat and—/span/p  
p style="text-indent: .5in; margin-bottom: .11in; line-height: 200%;"span style="font-size: 12pt;"The force of the man's body collapsing against Philo bashed his head into the mirror. It left a spiderweb fracture where forehead met glass. He slid from under the man, ears ringing, stomach unsure where to find itself. The man's body clung to the mirror and sickly squealed into a graceless pile on the floor. The squeal —and a perceptible absence of sound— was the only noise that pressed against Philo's eardrums. He pressed his palms against the ground and tried to exorcise the red parentheses from his peripheral vision. Smoke plumed from an abrasion at the front of the gallery, the street light like a lung, compressing and withdrawing the dust and fumes from the compromised building. The strobe blinked feebly. Bodies nearer to the explosion stumbled over themselves toward an unknown destination. A main speaker had been smashed into its respective parts, so the music lumbered unevenly across the planks of mirror and wood: the notes, distended, the track still keeping time. Philo had been on the ground for a measure. Now, for five quarter notes. The bodies with consciousness in them tried to find their center of gravity. After two more measures, a chunk of something pierced the smoke and landed somewhere near the middle of the gallery./span/p  
p style="text-indent: .5in; margin-bottom: .11in; line-height: 200%;"span style="font-size: 12pt;"A half-note./span/p  
p style="text-indent: .5in; margin-bottom: .11in; line-height: 200%;"span style="font-size: 12pt;"Light and sound bloomed from the charge and threw Philo back against the mirror again. His vision quivered. The music stopped./span/p  
p style="text-indent: .5in; margin-bottom: .11in; line-height: 200%;"span style="font-size: 12pt;"Philo called on Delillo, his Umbreon, and Woolf, his Weavile. Woolf ducked her way under the miasma and disappeared into the wall of yellow light./span/p  
p style="text-indent: .5in; margin-bottom: .11in; line-height: 200%;"span style="font-size: 12pt;"The glyphs across Delillo began to glow silver and surround the bodies in the club. Philo's man stirred slightly. After an interminable instant, another projectile appeared through the debris. Philo exclaimed, "Protect!" A blue film issued from Delillo and encircled every person in the club. Philo's hearing had returned, but the concussion of the charge against itself knocked him back into silence. A beam fell from the ceiling, but the patrons seemed to have sustained no further injury. With a nod, Philo turned on his heel and slipped out of the back of the club with Delillo's ears twitching for another attack./span/p  
p style="text-indent: .5in; margin-bottom: .11in; line-height: 200%;"span style="font-size: 12pt;"Philo took to the rooftops on Zadie, the Hydreigon. His whole team had rehearsed the protocol in case of an attack, which had never happened before. Woolf was the fastest, so she would pursue the assailants until Philo could confront them. Delillo would stay back and defend the patrons. The rest of his team would scout the city to support Woolf. The Gym Leader tore over buildings, scanning for any of his Pokémon or any disturbance, but under the feeble light of the moon and the cones of yellow perforating the streets, he couldn't see much. The two dipped in and out of alleys, squinting against the shadows. Philo's head throbbed./span/p  
p style="text-indent: .5in; margin-bottom: .11in; line-height: 200%;"span style="font-size: 12pt;"Soon, Boston appeared in the sky, too, on her Charizard, Butane. The dragon released a bellow that lit the whole block. The four of them descended on a dumpster where Woolf had frozen two teenagers to the ground. She held her razor claws to their throats; they looked sharper, whetted by the light of Butane's tail. The kids couldn't have been older than 15 or 16, with emaciated arms and a tenuous shadow of a goatee on either wan face./span/p  
p style="text-indent: .5in; margin-bottom: .11in; line-height: 200%;""span style="font-size: 12pt;"What," Philo said with the evenest tone he could construct, "the fuck are you doing attacking my gym?" His fists were clinched, but they did not quiver or shake./span/p  
p style="text-indent: .5in; margin-bottom: .11in; line-height: 200%;"span style="font-size: 12pt;"One of the children began to speak./span/p  
p style="text-indent: .5in; margin-bottom: .11in; line-height: 200%;""span style="font-size: 12pt;"Oh, I'm sorry," Boston said as she neared the boys. She buried her fist into the taller one's jaw. "That was a rhetorical question." Her braids swung with almost as much force as her fist; she repositioned them, a pattern of pink and brown perfectly at either side of her narrow face. Her eyes shone in the light, obsidian and pointed./span/p  
p style="text-indent: .5in; margin-bottom: .11in; line-height: 200%;""span style="font-size: 12pt;"It wasn't us— he paid us," the younger said./span/p  
p style="text-indent: .5in; margin-bottom: .11in; line-height: 200%;"span style="font-size: 12pt;"Philo wrestled a backpack from the boy's shoulders and tore it open like a candy wrapper. A few bills, a couple of PokéBalls, a granola bar, and the remaining charge fell to the ground. The boys struggled to escape from the ice that encased their feet as Philo pocketed the money./span/p  
p style="text-indent: .5in; margin-bottom: .11in; line-height: 200%;""span style="font-size: 12pt;"Who is /spanspan style="font-size: 12pt;"he/spanspan style="font-size: 12pt;"? And was it worth fifty bucks to risk taking innocent lives?" Philo said, his voice still level./span/p  
p style="text-indent: .5in; margin-bottom: .11in; line-height: 200%;""span style="font-size: 12pt;"For faggots?" Said the older. "Of course."/span/p  
p style="text-indent: .5in; margin-bottom: .11in; line-height: 200%;"span style="font-size: 12pt;"Boston punched him in the throat. "Say it again."/span/p  
p style="text-indent: .5in; margin-bottom: .11in; line-height: 200%;"span style="font-size: 12pt;"He sputtered but maintained his gaze. "Faggots."/span/p  
p style="text-indent: .5in; margin-bottom: .11in; line-height: 200%;"span style="font-size: 12pt;"Boston kicked the manacle of ice at his ankle. Philo was unsure if the crunch was the sound of the ice or the ankle as well. "You didn't answer the question, either."/span/p  
p style="text-indent: .5in; margin-bottom: .11in; line-height: 200%;""span style="font-size: 12pt;"Fuck if I know who it was. A decent meal costs five dollars and you think I'm about ask for receipts from a guy promising me fifty?"/span/p  
p style="text-indent: .5in; margin-bottom: .11in; line-height: 200%;"span style="font-size: 12pt;"Philo and Boston exchanged glances. Boston said, "Did he give any indication of his identity at all? Any markings? Any turns of phrase you found unique?"/span/p  
p style="text-indent: .5in; margin-bottom: .11in; line-height: 200%;"span style="font-size: 12pt;"The younger, "He had a tattoo on his right forearm. Looked like the outline of a Spinda, maybe?"/span/p  
p style="text-indent: .5in; margin-bottom: .11in; line-height: 200%;""span style="font-size: 12pt;"A Spinda. You're fucking with me." Philo said, then pointed to either of their waists. When he did, Woolf stomped her heel and ice crept past the knees and up to the crotch of the assailants. "Frost bite's going to set in pretty quickly, kiddos. If there's something else you want to tell us, this is the time."/span/p  
p style="text-indent: .5in; margin-bottom: .11in; line-height: 200%;"span style="font-size: 12pt;"The two children looked at each other, then back at Philo and Boston, who waited. Finally, the two mounted their Pokémon and took to the air./span/p  
p style="text-indent: .5in; margin-bottom: .11in; line-height: 200%;""span style="font-size: 12pt;"Wait!" one said. "It looked like maybe it had been burned on?"/span/p  
p style="text-indent: .5in; margin-bottom: .11in; line-height: 200%;""span style="font-size: 12pt;"Maybe they won't get frost bite," Boston said. "Maybe the herds of Hondour will get the first."/span/p  
p style="text-indent: .5in; margin-bottom: .11in; line-height: 200%;"span style="font-size: 12pt;"When Philo and Boston got back to the art gallery, the paramedics had still not arrived. Andi and a faction of unwounded patrons carried the unconscious and the dead out the collapsed gallery and into the fresh air. Dust still clung to the beams of light and in the distance something howled. Delillo hopped, glowing, from body to body in hopes of granting relief. Someone's Chansey hobbled through another sector of people, prodding at arms and legs. A few water Pokémon mopped brows and filled mouths./span/p  
p style="text-indent: .5in; margin-bottom: .11in; line-height: 200%;"span style="font-size: 12pt;"The whole place was trashed. The space, which Philo converted from a tire store into a duplex-like art space/club/Pokémon Gym, had completely collapsed in on itself. Philo didn't know if someone else attacked it while he and Boston were searching for the kids, or if the destruction completed itself of its own accord, but only wisps of bricks still stood. Wood smoke commingled with the smell of dried blood and urine and spit. The moon raked across dirt-caked faces. From the far corner of the building, the music still played softly. Philo collected his Pokémon, righted the overturned handles of liquor, and poured himself a vodka soda. He sat down next to statue that had all but its left arm still intact. The man from before had disappeared, which he imagined to be a good sign, unless he'd been piled with the dead. Philo didn't want to count them, the ten or twenty souls escaped from the broken bottles of their bodies. The ambulance might come. The reporters would come. They would lament, the region would lament, the loss of life and infliction of scars on young and beautiful people, the callous hand that would incite destruction on those benevolent patrons of the arts, who meant no harm but upon the bleakness of the world. Tragedy./span/p  
p style="text-indent: .5in; margin-bottom: .11in; line-height: 200%;"span style="font-size: 12pt;"Then the after-news talk shows. The pundits and the mothers whispering about the "queers getting what they deserve". The same people and call for blood that bruised the region when six of the eight Gym Leaders were queer, then the seventh, then the eighth. A sickness, they'd say. The darkness of humanity. Retribution from the sins of the War. However they manicured this attack, the culpability would attribute itself to a "confusion" or lifestyle choice. Some might even rally to remove art programs from the schools in an effort to stave off corruption and revitalize the failing and poorly-funded system./span/p  
p style="text-indent: .5in; margin-bottom: .11in; line-height: 200%;"span style="font-size: 12pt;"Boston and Andi sat on either side of Philo as he wept. He'd rebuilt the whole place. Haggled with art vendors. Taught safe sex classes and connected teens with HIV resources. He'd got his liquor license. Evolved Delillo into an Umbreon right outside when he was still living on the streets. He'd redone the wiring for the most efficient electricity usage and installed bullet-proof windows./span/p  
p style="text-indent: .5in; margin-bottom: .11in; line-height: 200%;""span style="font-size: 12pt;"This was my sanctuary," he breathed, almost imperceptibly./span/p  
p style="text-indent: .5in; margin-bottom: .11in; line-height: 200%;"span style="font-size: 12pt;"The paramedics never came. The news crews did. A few weeks later, after the five obituaries had run and their bodies had been returned to the ground and Philo had signed an endorsement deal with Viridian Lumber, the League sent him a check estimated at plenty of money to reconstruct and redecorate the building, even more opulently this time. Philo had become a hero. He had single-handedly saved the lives of countless lovers of art and tipped the police off to the Spinda Coalition, a hate group bent on eliminating "gender and sexual confusion" in the world. Philo could have statues, a designated dance floor, a small medical room for counseling and testing. The only catch was a contract that required ten different wood-filled commercials, resulting in a 24-month endorsement schedule. Not only would Philo become the face of Viridian Lumber, his skinny arms would advertise them on talk shows with demonstrations on easy wood panel installation. He would also be the new face of Wish Bandages and –not at the same time— Swagger Vodka ("Raise your status with Swagger!"). The bags under his eyes magically disappeared with Drowzease, a naturally-derived sleep aid for the insomniac or Type-A go-getter. Fewer voices spoke against the tragedy than Philo expected, but a few petitions circulated to have some products' commercials removed from primetime television./span/p  
p style="text-indent: .5in; margin-bottom: .11in; line-height: 200%;"span style="font-size: 12pt;"Philo put the Gym on the roof of the building this time. When he first built it, he put it in the basement with minimal lighting and cramped spaces to keep his opponents off-balance. He decided this time he wanted it out in the open. Peaches helped him design an outdoor theme that was worthy of his aesthetic. He began to take challengers again. He began to paint again./span/p  
p style="text-indent: .5in; margin-bottom: .11in; line-height: 200%;"span style="font-size: 12pt;"The man from the mirror owned one of the five obituaries. Rafael Acosta Quevedo. 32. Born in Kalos, immigrated to the region at age 19 after the peace treaties had all been drawn up. The rest of his family had been killed in one of the deployments of Terraka troops. He desired "not to taste the bile of our past transgressions, but rather to step onto new earth, bloodstained like my own, and embrace the bodies whence it flowed and not the actions that pierced the skin." Public speaker, apparently. He didn't look like his photo, as far as Philo remembered. The one the newspaper published portrayed him in a well-tailored suit, his hair cropped short, broad smile, arm around a woman brandishing a big diamond on her ring finger. He was one of the top stockbrokers at his firm, a real shark, as they said. The obituary didn't evoke the hair on Rafael's thighs or the deep, almost mechanical grunts that spilled from his mouth with each contraction of the tendons in his legs or the stench of sweat and iron. He played baseball on the weekends. Wasn't much for Pokémon training, but did travel to watch Lapras off the coast of Kanto during his summer vacations. He loved his fiancée, who did not provide a comment regarding the site of his death. Organ donor. No children./span/p  
p style="text-indent: .5in; margin-bottom: .11in; line-height: 200%;"span style="font-size: 12pt;"As best as Philo could, he painted the two of them as a mural on the side of the new gym. Rafael's hair, a wavy and sweaty mess, his earrings illuminated by the strobe, his chest taut with heaving and a leather vest, his pants tossed gracelessly to the side. Philo, his hands attempting to reach through the mirror, the harness keeping his intestines inside his body, his mouth half-agape with /spanspan style="font-size: 12pt;"I'm sorry/spanspan style="font-size: 12pt;" or /spanspan style="font-size: 12pt;"Harder/spanspan style="font-size: 12pt;", his eyes open and drinking the mottled and dynamic doppelganger before him, all purple and shadow and trapped inside a wall./span/p  
p style="text-indent: .5in; margin-bottom: .11in; line-height: 200%;"span style="font-size: 12pt;"The bricks drank in the stain./span/p  
p style="margin-bottom: .11in; line-height: 108%;" /p 


End file.
